Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
Today I'll give my history and progression with metal detecting, including my impression of the various detectors that I've used.
The first metal detector I used was a Radio Shack metal detector that my grandmother bought a long time ago. I would guess it was in the 1950s or something. I can't remember how old I was, but she got it and we went out to her childhood home where not much more than the stone chimney was left standing. I recall finding some relics - but only iron and bigger things. As I recall, correctly or not, that metal detector wouldn't detect a coin. Maybe we didn't know how to use it. I'm very vague about all of that now.
Years passed and I moved to Florida and bought a White's metal detector out of a Sears Roebuck catalog. I took it to Hollywood beach and found coins. For some reason I returned it. I thought, again correctly or incorrectly, that something was wrong with it, but I had found enough that I was hooked.
I think my next metal detector was a Fisher Aquanaut 1280. I found a lot with that metal detector and eventually moved from targeting coins to targeting jewelry. I found my first ring at Hollywood Beach in the wet sand with that detector. My parents were visiting and I took them out to show them the metal detector and quickly found that ring. They were amazed.
That was the metal detector that got me into shallow water detecting. It was also the metal detector that I was using when I learned the down side of discrimination. I turned down the discrimination and started finding more small gold rings. Discrimination on that metal detector was set by using a single knob. There was no notch or target ID.
My impressions of the 1280 are very favorable. I found a lot with it. It was very reliable. I sold it years later for almost what I paid for it new. It paid for itself in face value coin finds in the first year.
I did have trouble with one thing on it at first. The arm rest holder was plastic. I broke the plastic arm rest about three times in short order and then they replaced it with a metal one.
Around this time I tried a Garrett pulse induction metal detector. I used it a few times and noticed how hot it was to iron. I didn't find much gold with it and thought it wasn't working well. After getting it looked at, they said there was nothing wrong with it, and I decided to sell it. Now I think I just didn't understand pulse induction metal detectors back then.
I got a Tesoro Royal Sabre while I was still using the 1280. It had some interesting new features. One was notch discrimination. Another was what they called surface blanking.
I used the Royal Sabre mostly as a backup and on junky dry sand sites. It was not water proof and didn't work very well in wet sand. It worked well for years, and they had what they advertised as a life-time guarantee, so it was repaired a couple of times under warranty. However, as I've said before, the advertised Tesoro life-time warranty is not really a life-time warranty. When they declare a detector obsolete, they no longer will repair it.
Somewhere around that I got a two-box metal detector. It was a Fisher Gemini something or other. I used it some, but not much. The best thing it did for me was find my septic tank.
At some time I got a Tesoro Stingray as a back-up for water detecting. They didn't have it grounded right and I sent it back to them about three times without being fixed. They eventually sent me one that had a fix. They said it was "Jack's detector." It worked right, so I kept it, but the fix eventually came back to bite me. After a few years, when I sent it for warranty repairs they said it had been modified so was out of warranty, even though they were the ones that modified it. The Stingray that one that they originally sent me never did work right.
My impression of the Tesoro detectors is that when they were right they worked ok. They were good on small gold and I liked the notch and other features, but I wouldn't buy one today considering the type of detecting I do, and the fact that they did not honor their advertised "life-time" warranty.
My Tesoro detectors were always more of a back-up or special situation detector for me anyhow. My wife used the Royal Sabre occasionally. It was light and had a fast response.
I basically transitioned from the 1280 to a modified Nautilus that was modified and put in a Nikolite case and sold by Steve Noga. That was my favorite metal detector and I found a lot with it. That was also the time when I did my most intense and productive metal detecting, mostly in South Florida. That was sometime in the 1980s and 1990s. I was hitting it heavy then and doing very well.
After I got my first modified Nautilus from Steve, I used it about two or three days and called him up and asked me if he'd give me a deal on a second one. If anything went wrong with that one, I wanted to have another one ready as a back-up. That was a great detector for what I was doing. It nulled on iron, so you could tell that an iron object was there, but you didn't really get a signal from iron. Really good and deep on small gold.
I found a small hollow gold bead at Turtle Trail one day that I could barely see in the course brown sand even after I threw it onto my coil. I moved it around on the coil and the detector would respond, but I still had a hard time seeing it.
I don't know what happened to Steve, but Herb McDonald then made a very similar home-made detector that I used after that. Very similar, but involved more tuning. Herb is deceased.
After that I used Excaliburs and a Minelab Sovereign detectors. They were decent.
I also tried a White's Pulse, but was never impressed by it and didn't use it much. The plastic parts broke down a lot. I don't think they were made to stand up to Florida heat and sun.
My most recent detectors are a Garrett Ace 250 and a Garrett ATX. They are at opposite ends of the spectrum. The Ace is a light little inexpensive detector with some discrimination and target ID. For the price, very good. The ATX is more expensive, but very good sensitivity. It is not for most people. It is heavy, detects deep, including on small iron, and takes a good while to master. It took me a long time to learn to use it well.
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The surf this weekend is down around two feet. It will just be a foot or two higher next week. Not much change.
Enjoy the Treasure Hunter's Cookout today.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
